Mobility Is The Future Of Banking

The Indian banking sector has proven to be one of the most prolifically expanding industries in the world. Banks in India have been quick to implement new technological solutions as they recognized very early that technology will help them gain a competitive edge and help them enhance customer experience by launching new services and improving their customer relationship management systems.

Once upon a time, Mobile was an emerging technology. That time has long passed and we can safely assume that Mobile is the mainstream and will continue to be for some time. Almost every bank in the market offers some form of a mobile offering. Given the dynamic nature of the business and customer expectations which are constantly evolving, banking solutions also need to meet those expectations.

Mobile also is disrupting the financial services industry like never before. It is triggering the rise of atypical competition in the form of non-financial organizations entering the market. It is asking questions of the incumbent players and forcing them to rethink and reevaluate their long term market strategy. It would not be outlandish to speculate that the future leaders in this market might not even be banks but some new hybrid intermediary. The possibility even, makes the banking sector one of the most exciting and disruptive in the business world.

What will the future look like?

The iPhone rewrote the rules of mobility and the lesson learnt was that user experience must be at the heart of your product or service. The future of mobility will continue to rely on great customer experience, simplicity of tasks and robust security. But it will start to diversify as AI becomes more main stream and solutions that can leverage the power of AI are introduced in the market. An early version of Chatbots being used by banks are indications of this trend.

Banks will need to be where its customers are. Since almost all customers are on social media in one form or another, social media based banking solutions will become more common place. With improvements in NFC and IOT, and smart phones becoming more powerful, app based smartphone banking will also emerge as leading banking channels. Virtual assistants like Alexa, Siri, Cortana and Echo, and VR technology like Oculus will make Virtual Reality Banking a viable alternative to personal banking.

Why is mobility the future of banking?

Smartphone penetration stands at roughly 25%, with data rates in India being one of the cheapest in the world this is only bound to increase YOY. Ecommerce apps on mobile phones will continue to drive transaction volumes for banks because of ease of use and convenience. Biometrics (Voice Based Navigation, Identification & Authentication, Fingerprint, Iris, veins, heart rate, e.g.) is powering Chatbots for ease of command, multilingual capability and improving security by many notches and digital currency is fuelling an electronic revolution in B2B space.

As Blockchain technologies offering greater security and scalability gain acceptability, the possibility of a secure digital currency on the lines of Bitcoin will lead more B2B and B2C transactions and add to the mobile transaction volume

While many believe CIO's role is evolving and that he's occupying a key place in the boardroom, a recent study brings to light that more than half of the CIO, CTO or IT admin staff (55%) are not thanked by colleagues for carrying out essential IT tasks on their behalf.